You may think it’s weird that Russian women are prepared to move for love, but it seems like a regular thing in their homeland. A recent poll revealed that 11% of Russians have moved to another town because of marriage.

Moving for love — why not?

A survey by WCIOM asked Russians about moving within the country (obviously, they didn’t ask Russian women who moved abroad; 1600 respondents living in Russia answered the questions).

The poll demonstrated that Russian ladies are more mobile than men: 53% of ladies changed the place of residence as compared to 46% of males who migrated within Russia since birth.

Another surprising statistics is that marriage seems to be important enough to move for it! 11% of respondents to the poll said they moved because they got married.

All in all, 50% or 1 in 2 Russians have moved to another place to live since birth.

St. Petersburg is the most desirable city to live

The leader of the poll is St. Petersburg, where 15% of Russians would love to live.

However, it’s not the whole truth. Many people would love to live in the warmest region of Russia, likely at one of the lovely seaside resorts, with Krasnodar region scoring 18% of mentions as the place of dream location.

The method of the survey has a lot to do with this, because only the cities that scored over 2% are in the rating below. Thus, St. Petersburg is #1 and Moscow is #2 as the city to live.

But if a person considers several attractive destinations, then the picture looks different to the rating by absolute numbers.

Krasnodar region with its administrative centre Sochi (#5 on the list of desirable cities) has a lot of small towns that attract tons of visitors in summer. Prices for real estate are still quite affordable there, so people who can buy a place to live are able to move to the warmest region of Russia for a budget price. It’s not unusual for residents of Moscow to sell their apartments and buy elsewhere an amazing house, by comparison to the modest flat they sold.

All these cute little town couldn’t score a large enough percentage of mentions, but they did bring Krasnodar region to #1 position as the desirable area to reside within Russia.

7% of Russians moved because they got an apartment. This could be one of these things we discussed when talking about why Russians are so keen to look after their elders and practically never take them to old people homes.

25% of Russians want to live elsewhere

In total, 25% of Russians would like to move elsewhere within Russia. Women again show a greater wish to change homes than men: 28% vs. 23%.

Residents of capitals (Moscow, St. Petersburg) don’t express as much desire to find another place to live as compared to people from smaller cities with population 500-950 thousand people: 12% vs. 33%.

Younger people are more inclined to movement: 31% among the group aged 18-24 said they would like to do it, 40% among 25-34-year-olds, and 34% within the group 35-44. The movement sentiment drops to 13% among people aged 60+.

However, if you asked residents of capitals about immigration, this may be a completely different picture. The emigration sentiment in Russia is at its highest in the 21 century. But we may have to go to another polling company to find out about that, as WCIOM is government-owned and often accused at fudging numbers to suit the current political agenda.

Data: WCIOM.ru

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